


Take my Heart

by stardustsroses



Category: Red Queen - Victoria Aveyard
Genre: F/M, Fluff, during king's cage, marecal, mareven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 07:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14930021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustsroses/pseuds/stardustsroses
Summary: Weeks have passed since Mare was rescued from Maven, but the monsters in her head aren’t going away anytime soon. Neither are Cal’s. As Mare comforts him after another nightmare, they realize they still have a long path to walk towards healing. lots of fluff, lil bit of angst. /// this one-shot takes place during King’s Cage.inspired by the song Take my Heart by Birdy.





	Take my Heart

Cal’s living quarters seem to burn like the pits of hell.

Even at night, with the small window open, my thin shirt clings to every part of my skin, my hair sticks to my forehead and temples, and I feel the blood boiling in my cheeks. But I don’t mind the heat. I’ve been so cold for so long.

He is sleeping next to me – Cal. Sleep has abandoned me for the night, having no intention to return any time soon, so I distract myself from the haunting nightmares still playing in the back of my mind by watching him. His face is scrunched up in a frown, his breathing troubled. I know better than to wake him from his own nightmares. I know better than to touch him while the monsters are running after him in his head. In his dreams, he may not distinguish me from them. I’m afraid I might frighten him further.

So, I wait, a worried sting in my stomach. I wait for it to end. As I have for most nights.

There hasn’t been a night where I’ve been able to sleep on my own. After weeks of being freed, I still can’t close my eyes without Cal’s warmth enveloping me. This dependency scares me.

But then again, my own monsters scare me more.

Cal jolts up, his hands trembling, his forehead dripping with sweat. Even before his eyes open, he is reaching for me.

“Mare,” he says. Like a prayer. Like a promise. “Mare.”

My forearms are pressing down on his naked chest, my hands are on his face and I urge him to open his eyes.

“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here.”

Brown eyes look into my own. Cal lets out a heavy breath, like he had been underwater for a long time, and lets himself fall deeper into the mattress. Under me, I feel his muscles relaxing, I feel his breathing steadying, slowly, slowly. He pulls me to him, and I don’t mind his burning touch.

“It’s okay,” I murmur, my hot breath against his cheek. I repeat it, because there’s nothing else I can say. “It’s okay. I’m here.”

“My love.” His voice is a whisper I almost don’t catch. But I do. And my heart stills at those little words – he had never called me that, not in such a way. And those words, so raw, so frightened, so true, make their way into my head and into my heart and I feel them taking roots, making themselves at home.

“Hey.” I grab his disregarded t-shirt at the end of the bed, resume my initial position half on top of him, and gently wipe his forehead. “Are you okay?”

He nods slowly, his eyes half open, staring at me as if it’s the first time he’s doing so. But I can feel his temperature rising, his body becoming unbearably hot.

“Cal, you need to cool down,” I say. “Look at me. Calm yourself down.”

My body is burning all over, but my hands are still a lot cooler than his skin. So, when my thumb traces his bottom lip and my hands caress his jawline, something in Cal seems to wake. He takes a few deep breaths, eyes stuck to mine, and a few minutes later, his body no longer burns me.

“Good,” I say, encouraging him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

His eyes are pained and his eyebrows are furrowed. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out that this wasn’t just another nightmare. It was worse.

“No,” he says. His voice feels like sandpaper.

“Sit up,” I order, moving off him. He doesn’t seem happy to let me go, but once he sees me reaching for the bottle of water next to his bed – or our bed, I force myself to think – his hands drop and he sits up, his back against the wall and his head next to the window. No breeze can be felt coming in. “Drink. Slow.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, touching the bottle to his lips. He takes a sip. My eyes follow the movement of his tongue collecting the droplets from his lip. “You’ve been dealing with this every night.”

I shake my head. “I wasn’t asleep. You don’t have to apologize, Cal. How many times have you done the same for me?”

“Still,” he says, looking away from me. I catch something in his eyes, something I can’t quite name and it startles me. “You should rest. I should let you rest.”

“I rest fine with you here,” I mumble distractedly, watching him.

He’s silent for a moment, taking his time with the water. The moonlight hits his skin, and even though I’m worried for him, my attention slides to his torso momentarily and I allow myself to take in the sight. The light makes the contours of his body stand out more, makes his muscles much more prominent. His chest is slick with sweat. My mind goes back to nights where that chest would be pressed against mine, moving in time with me; where those arms would be circling my body, holding my tight against him, making me feel like I could finally start to forget that I’d been caged and tortured and made to see and do terrible, monstrous things.

He’s so entranced in his own thoughts he hasn’t noticed me staring.

“Cal,” I say, moving closer to him. Hesitantly, I reach for him, cupping his cheek. “You can talk to me. No matter what it is, if it’ll help you…rest. I’ll listen.”

His eyes snap back to mine. Cal turns his face slowly, and kisses my palm – just a simple touch of his lips to my hand, and I feel like melting in his arms. I can see the conflict in his eyes – wanting to share the burden with me but not wanting to let himself turn my thoughts to those nightmares.

What I don’t tell him is that I want him to talk to me. I want him to lean on me, as I have leaned on him for the past couple of nights. I want him to pour his heart out to me, tell me his fears, trust me. I want to know that I’m not the only one that’s damaged, broken, maybe beyond repair. I want him to know that we’re the same. And we’re here for each other.

I’m here for him.

And, after all, we were both running away from the same monster.

Cal touches my hand, bringing my knuckles to his mouth. He kisses each one slowly, as if he’d forgotten my words. When I think he won’t answer, he says, in no more than a broken whisper: “He had you in his arms. You were with him.”

He. Him.

Maven.

Now I know what I saw in his eyes – betrayal, jealousy, anger, fear.

I say nothing. So, he continues: “It started like every other nightmare. But then you were dancing with him, wearing red. And then you weren’t wearing much at all.”

My throat tightens. His hand is burning.

“And the worst is that,” he swallows, momentarily looking away, “you here happy. Smiling.”

“It’s not real.” The words blurt out of my mouth before I have thought them through. “I could never…it’s not real, Cal.”

“It felt real. So real.”

We stare at each other. I wonder if he can hear my heart, because I can hear his. I wonder if there will ever be a time where the ghosts will stop chasing us and let us be. I wonder if there will be such a time, where him and I can sleep through the night without having to face our fears.

And he looks so broken, so beautifully devastated – like I’d never seen him look before – that I don’t hesitate; I move onto his lap, I take his face in my hands and touch my lips to his cheek.

Can you hear my heart? I want to ask. Can you feel how much I love you?

“You made me a promise,” I whisper against his lips. “That you would not go back. That you would not take the crown. So let me make a promise of my own.” I go to grab his hand and hold in mine. “I promise you that that dream will never become reality. Do you believe me?”

“Of course I believe you,” he whispers back. His other hand moves to my face, and he makes it his task to pull away all the strands of hair that got loose from my bun. “But the thought of losing you again, I-”

“You’re not going to lose me.” I make him look at me in the eyes. I make him see that my words are true. “We will end this war one way or another, Cal. And we will win. Because he can’t.”

When his arms circle my waist and when he leans in to kiss me, I can still see the pain in those eyes. I can still see the anguish caused by the loss of his brother.

And I want to make him forget. Even if its temporarily.

So I tilt his chin up to me, touch my forehead to his, close my eyes.

He might leave. He might betray you too. He might just break you all over.

I shake the thoughts from my brain as his lips touch mine. My blood boils underneath my skin at his touch and I want to drown in that fire. He’s kissing me like the world might just end at any second.

It is.

I kiss him just the same.

My arms wrap around his neck as his hands run up and down my bare legs tantalizingly slow. My own tangle through his hair on the back of his head, and I’m so lost in that softness, in the wet warmth of his mouth, that I only notice that he’s pushed me down onto the mattress when my sweat covered back touches it. His weight on top of me feels familiar, comforting, and I no longer notice his fire.

I’m burning on my own.

He pesters my face with kisses – quick, sweet, almost playful kisses that provoke a giggle in me. Cal pushes himself onto his elbows, looking down at me with a smile of his own, his mood now changed, his monsters forgotten. For now.

“I could hear you laughing forever,” he murmurs, his eyes shining in the darkness. “It’s become my favourite sound.”

My brain can’t seem to come up with an answer for his confession, so I simply look up at him and smile – truly smile. I make the decision to turn my brain off; turn everything that isn’t Cal off. I realize, as I look up at him, as he smiles down at me with so much love and tenderness, that I wouldn’t really mind if the world did end at that moment.

The world had already ended for me countless times before. But this time, I would die happy. For once.

I pull his face down to me and pull his lips onto mine whilst making a mental note to cherish the feeling he sparks inside me.

His arms are a cage I don’t want to leave.

His mouth is a maze I want to get lost in forever.

His lips pull away from mine only to make a path down to my jaw, then down to my neck. My breath catches in my throat. My eyes move to his shoulder blades, following the movement of his muscles as he moves down my body. But I grab him, urging him to come to me again.

His smile seems to sparkle in the moonlight as he pulls himself up. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?” He asks, a wicked glint dancing in his eyes.

I look down at his underwear – the only thing he’s wearing. Raise an eyebrow at him. “Why are you?”

His grin matches mine as he leans down and claims my lips once more. I sigh against him in content, wrapping my legs around his waist. Before he has a chance to do anything further, I roll us over so I’m laying flat on him. I grin.

“Mare,” he says. My name is a melody on his lips I don’t wish to erase from my memory. His fingers trace my hair. “Mare, tell me something.”

“What?”

“Tell me anything. Tell me anything good.”

I cross my arms over his chest, lean my chin over them. I stare at him as I whisper:

“I love you.”

He smiles – so wide and so softly. “And I love you.”

“Now you tell me something good. Anything you can think of.”

“I want to make you happy,” he murmurs, placing one arm under his head and using his other hand to gently stroke my cheek. “I want to make you the happiest girl in the world, Mare.”

I want to tell him that he will. I want to tell him that we will have a chance at a life. But I don’t know that. I don’t know if I should hope for that or even give him hope. But I smile anyways, and I let myself pretend that we are those kinds of people.

“My turn,” I say. I trace his collarbones, place a little kiss on his chin. “Your kisses are one of my favourite things.”

He wiggles his eyebrows at me, lifts my chin and eyes me with a playfulness I haven’t seen in a long time.

“Oh? Just one of your favourite things? Do you want to tell me what other favourite things of mine you have in mind?”

I lean in as if telling him a secret. Kiss the spot under his ear on the way, making him squirm under me. “No.”

His hot breath hits my ear as he chuckles. He pulls me back to look at me, pecks my lips once. Then twice. Then a third time. “Is it my turn?”

“Yes.”

He sighs, the worried lines on his face completely gone. It’s just him and I now. The world outside doesn’t exist. The war doesn’t exist. We are two normal people in love, who have never felt pain nor loss, who have never been divided by society.

Cal’s eyes wonder over my face, a smile as bright as the moon outside. “I’m going to marry you someday.”

I scoff, because there’s no other reaction I can possibly have given those words. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m very serious,” he says, nodding his head.

“You need sleep, Cal. You’re completely delirious.”

He shakes his head, and his smile is indeed delirious. “One day, you and I are going to be standing on an isle and I’m going to be declaring my love for you in front of your family.”

I smile and chuckle with him, because I, too, feel completely delirious. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, or maybe I’m just drunk off his lips. But the image is now stuck in my brain and I can’t seem to shake it off.

“Is that a promise?” Is all I ask.

“That is a promise.” Is all he says.

I smile, despite myself. I smile like a happy little child. Like a school girl with a crush. But I can’t help myself – not when he looks at me like that, like he’s so convinced it’ll happen and so happy at the prospect.

“What makes you so sure I’ll say yes?”

He smiles, wraps his big arms around me, moves his hands in soothing circles down and up my back. Then his lips touch mine, so burning hot, so dizzying that lose track of time, of myself.

Please don’t let this end, I want to beg. Please don’t leave.

And he pulls his lips away. Despite the warmth of his body, I feel instantly cold.

Cal’s smile encourages mine. He murmurs: “You already have my heart, Mare. Do I have yours?”

And we’re just normal people who fell in love with each other, so I say: “Take it. It’s yours.”

And Cal is as drunk off me as I am off him, so he asks: “Would you say yes?”

And I’m delirious, after all. So I say, “Yes.”

And he whispers, “I love you.”

And when he pulls me for another kiss, when his arms take me with him as he rolls over, when his hands make me feel lost and found at the same time, I can only repeat his words back to him. Like a prayer. Like a promise. “I love you.”


End file.
